1 By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat and also wept, as we thought of Zion.2 There on the poplars we hung up our lyres.3 For our captors asked us there for songs, our tormentors, for amusement, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion.”4 How can we sing a song of Yhwh on alien soil?5 If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither;6 Let my tongue stick to my palate if I cease to think of you, if I do not keep Jerusalem in memory even at my happiest hour.

7 Remember, Yhwh, against the Edomites the day of Jerusalem’s fall; how they cried, “Strip her, strip her to her very foundations!”8 Fair Babylon, you predator,happy is the one who repays you in kind what you have inflicted on us;9 Happy is the one who seizes and dashes
your babies against a rock! (NJPS with adjustments)

Al Naharot Bavel—By the rivers of Babylon (Psalm 137) contains some of the Bible’s most beautiful passages. The verse, אִם אֶשְׁכָּחֵךְ יְרוּשָׁלָ‍ִם תִּשְׁכַּח יְמִינִי , “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither,” is sung at traditional Jewish weddings. The psalm itself is officially part of the weekday bentching (grace after meals) in the Ashkenazi tradition.

This same psalm, however, a mere few verses later, contains one of the most horrifying curses against Israel’s enemies in the Bible:

אַשְׁרֵי שֶׁיֹּאחֵז וְנִפֵּץ אֶת עֹלָלַיִךְ אֶל הַסָּלַע, “Happy is the one who seizes and dashes your babies against a rock!” (v. 9).

Question: How are we supposed to read such a verse nowadays? How do we understand the biblical author and, perhaps more troubling, how do we understand how such a verse made it into the Bible?

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